How to change image names in install wim. What is the WIM file extension? Working with a DISM live image

To work with .wim archives, Windows includes the Dism utility (and the wimlib library is its open-source alternative).
Let's look at several typical tasks, first using the example of Dism version 6.1.7600 (built into Windows 7), then Dism version 10.0.14393 (built into Windows 10).

dism version 6.1.7600 can do nothing at all:
/Get-MountedWimInfo
/Get-WimInfo
/Commit-Wim
/Unmount-Wim
/Mount-Wim
/Remount-Wim
/Cleanup-Wim

List images in wim file

Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:install.wim
For example, install.wim from the Windows 7 installation disk contains four images (it makes sense to pay attention to the Index and Name fields):

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 6.1.7600.16385 Details for image: install.wim Index: 1 Name: Windows 7 HOMEBASIC Description: Windows 7 HOMEBASIC Size: 11,531,865,453 bytes Index: 2 Name: Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM Description: Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM Size: 12,045,241,621 bytes Index: 3 Name: Windows 7 PROFESSIONAL Description: Windows 7 PROFESSIONAL Size: 11,947,613,470 bytes Index: 4 Name: Windows 7 ULTIMATE Description: Windows 7 ULTIMATE Size: 12,110,440,566 bytes The operation completed successfully.

View image contents

To view the contents of the image, you need to mount it by index or name (name is too much of a distortion, so I’m giving an example only with the index):
Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:install.wim /index:3 /MountDir:C:\win7 /ReadOnly
With this command we mounted the "Windows 7 PROFESSIONAL" image into the C:\win7 directory. By default, the image is mounted writable, but the /ReadOnly switch sets the access mode to read-only.

Make changes to the image

1. Mount the desired image to change (without the /ReadOnly key):
Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:install.wim /index:3 /MountDir:C:\win7
2. Change/Replace/Add/Delete files in the C:\win7 directory as in any other.
3. Unmount the image saving the changes:
Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\Win7 /commit
or the same with two separate commands:
Dism /Commit-Wim /MountDir:C:\win7

Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\Win7 /discard

View a list of all mounted images (as well as their status)

Dism/Get-MountedWimInfo

Dism version 10.0.14393, among other things, can do the following:

/Split-Image
/Apply-Image

Split a wim file into several swm files

Wim is a file-type archive; it will not be possible to split it with some kind of dd. But it will work with the following command. It can be useful, for example, when you manually make an installation flash drive in FAT32 (this file system has a file size limit - a maximum of 4GB). The resulting swm files should be located in the sources directory. The FileSize key takes the size in megabytes.
Dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:install.wim /SWMFile:install.swm /FileSize:4096

Apply (unpack) the image to the file system
Dism /Apply-Image /Image-File:install.wim /Index:1 /ApplyDir:D:\ /EA
In the case of an archive divided into swm files, you must specify the file naming pattern.
Dism /Apply-Image /Image-File:install.swm /SWMFile:install*.swm /Index:1 /ApplyDir:D:\ /EA
The /EA switch instructs to set extended file attributes.

Editing the registry - one of the most common operations when performing various tweaks aimed at improving the functionality of Windows. As a rule, making changes to the registry is carried out on a production system, however, when deploying Windows on several computers, this method may not be appropriate. Of course, you can create a set REG -files and merge them on each instance of Windows installed, but there is another option.

Make changes to the registry in advance, to the image, thanks to which everything tweaks will be applied automatically during system installation.

To do this, you will need an unpacked system image, in which you will need to find the file INSTALL.WIM (it is located in the SOURCES directory) and copy it to any convenient place (this is our section D) .

Create on disk D folder mount, run the command line as administrator and mount to the folder mount image INSTALL.WIM using the following command:

Dism /mount-wim /wimfile:D:\install.wim /index:1 /mountdir:D:\mount

  • D:/install.wim– this is the original location of the image
  • INSTALL.WIM, index:1- system edition,
  • D:/mount- the directory in which the image will be mounted.

Note: since one image may contain several editions of the same version of the system (Home, Professional, Corporate, etc.) , just before mounting it is advisable to find out its index (index). To do this, use the command Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\install.wim.

After the image is mounted, load the registry branch you need from it. The path in the key unload command may be different depending on which registry section you are going to edit.

  • If it is HKLM/SOFTWARE , the path will be windows/system32/config/software
  • If HKLM/SYSTEM - windows/system32/config/system
  • If HKLM/SAM then windows/system32/config/SAM
  • To load the HKLM/Security subkey, use the path windows/system32/config/security
  • For DEFAULT in the HKEY_USERS section - windows/system32/config/default

Let's say you need to access a subkey SOFTWARE. Immediately load it in the console with the following command:

reg load HKLM/EDIT D:\mount\windows\system32\config\software

Where EDIT- temporary subsection in the registry editor. After this, open the registry editor on a running system and expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\EDIT branch.

Please, now you can create and edit the keys you need. Once you're done, close the editor and unload the section back with the command reg unload HKLM\EDIT .

WIM File Summary

The WIM file extension has one file type(s) and is associated with five different software, but mainly with 7-Zip, developed Igor Pavlov. They are often presented in the format Windows Imaging Format File. The main part of these categories are classified as Disk Image Files.

WIM files are found on mobile and desktop platforms and can be opened on Windows, Android, and Linux. The popularity rating of WIM files is "Low", which means that these files are rarely found.

For more information about WIM files and associated software applications, see the information below. Additionally, the following also provides a basic troubleshooting guide to help you resolve issues that occur while opening WIM files.

Popularity of file types
File Rank

Activity

This file type is still relevant and is actively used by developers and application software. Although the original software of this file type may be overshadowed by a newer version (eg Excel 97 vs Office 365), this file type is still actively supported by the current version of the software. This process of interacting with an old operating system or outdated version of software is also known as " backward compatibility».

File status
Page Last updated


WIM file types

WIM Master File Association

The WIM file extension is an image file format that was developed by Microsoft and introduced by Windows Vista. This allows a single disk image to be shared across multiple platforms and can be used to manage files without booting the operating system. A WIM file allows users to serve a standalone image and multiple image stores in one specific file.

Software that opens Windows Imaging Format File:


Compatible with:

Windows

Android

Linux


Compatible with:

Windows


Compatible with:

Windows


Compatible with:

Windows


Compatible with:

Windows

Linux


Try a universal file viewer

In addition to the products listed above, we suggest you try a universal file viewer like FileViewPro. The tool can open over 200 different file types, providing editing functionality for most of them.

License | | Terms |


Troubleshooting problems opening WIM files

Common problems opening WIM files

7-Zip is not installed

By double clicking on the WIM file you can see a system dialog box telling you "This file type cannot be opened". In this case, it is usually due to the fact that 7-Zip for %%os%% is not installed on your computer. Since your operating system doesn't know what to do with this file, you won't be able to open it by double-clicking on it.


Advice: If you know of another program that can open the WIM file, you can try opening the file by selecting that application from the list of possible programs.

The wrong version of 7-Zip is installed

In some cases, you may have a newer (or older) version of the Windows Imaging Format File, not supported by the installed version of the application. If you do not have the correct version of the 7-Zip software (or any of the other programs listed above), you may need to download a different version of the software or one of the other software applications listed above. This problem most often occurs when working in an older version of the application software With file created in a newer version, which the old version cannot recognize.


Advice: Sometimes you can get a general idea of ​​the version of a WIM file by right-clicking the file and then choosing Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac OSX).


Summary: Either way, most problems that occur when opening WIM files are due to not having the correct software application installed on your computer.

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Other causes of problems opening WIM files

Even if you already have 7-Zip or other WIM-related software installed on your computer, you may still encounter problems while opening Windows Imaging Format Files. If you are still having problems opening WIM files, it may be due to other problems preventing these files from being opened. Such problems include (presented in order from most to least common):

  • Incorrect links to WIM files in the Windows registry (“phone book” of the Windows operating system)
  • Accidental deletion of description WIM file in the Windows registry
  • Incomplete or incorrect installation application software associated with the WIM format
  • File corruption WIM (problems with the Windows Imaging Format File itself)
  • WIM infection malware
  • Damaged or outdated device drivers hardware associated with the WIM file
  • Lack of sufficient system resources on the computer to open Windows Imaging Format File

Quiz: What file extension is a bitmap image type?

Right!

Close, but not quite...

TIFF files or Tagged Image File Format, is considered a raster image file. They are very popular in the publishing industry due to their ability to be compressed using lossless compression (while maintaining high quality).


Best Operating Systems

Windows (82.33%)
Android (11.56%)
iOS (3.43%)
Macintosh (1.71%)
Linux (0.60%)

Event of the day

The popular open source compression tool, 7zip, was developed and released in 1999 by Igor Pavlov. The tool uses .7z as the default file extension, and users can choose from a long list of common compression methods, including LZMA, LZMA2, Bzip2, PPMD ​​and deflate.



How to fix problems opening WIM files

If you have installed on your computer antivirus program Can scan all files on your computer, as well as each file individually. You can scan any file by right-clicking on the file and selecting the appropriate option to scan the file for viruses.

For example, in this figure it is highlighted file my-file.wim, then you need to right-click on this file and select the option in the file menu "scan with AVG". When you select this option, AVG Antivirus will open and scan the file for viruses.


Sometimes an error may occur as a result incorrect software installation, which may be due to a problem encountered during the installation process. This may interfere with your operating system associate your WIM file with the correct application tool, influencing the so-called "file extension associations".

Sometimes simple reinstalling 7-Zip may solve your problem by linking WIM to 7-Zip correctly. In other cases, problems with file associations may result from bad software programming developer and you may need to contact the developer for further assistance.


Advice: Try updating 7-Zip to the latest version to ensure you have the latest patches and updates.


This may seem too obvious, but often The WIM file itself may be causing the problem. If you received a file via an email attachment or downloaded it from a website and the download process was interrupted (such as a power outage or other reason), the file may become damaged. If possible, try getting a new copy of the WIM file and try opening it again.


Carefully: A damaged file can cause collateral damage to previous or existing malware on your PC, so it is important to keep your computer up-to-date with an up-to-date antivirus.


If your WIM file related to the hardware on your computer to open the file you may need update device drivers associated with this equipment.

This problem usually associated with media file types, which depend on successfully opening the hardware inside the computer, e.g. sound card or video card. For example, if you are trying to open an audio file but cannot open it, you may need to update sound card drivers.


Advice: If when you try to open a WIM file you receive .SYS file error message, the problem could probably be associated with corrupted or outdated device drivers that need to be updated. This process can be made easier by using driver update software such as DriverDoc.


If the steps do not solve the problem and you are still having problems opening WIM files, this could be due to lack of available system resources. Some versions of WIM files may require a significant amount of resources (e.g. memory/RAM, processing power) to properly open on your computer. This problem is quite common if you are using fairly old computer hardware and at the same time a much newer operating system.

This problem can occur when the computer is having difficulty keeping up with a task because the operating system (and other services running in the background) may consume too many resources to open a WIM file. Try closing all applications on your PC before opening Windows Imaging Format File. Freeing up all available resources on your computer will provide you with the best conditions for attempting to open your WIM file.


If you completed all the steps described above and your WIM file still won't open, you may need to run equipment update. In most cases, even when using older versions of hardware, the processing power can still be more than sufficient for most user applications (unless you're doing a lot of CPU-intensive work, such as 3D rendering, financial/scientific modeling, or intensive multimedia work) . Thus, it is likely that your computer does not have enough memory(commonly called "RAM" or random access memory) to perform the task of opening a file.

Try refreshing your memory to see if this helps you open the WIM file. Today, memory upgrades are quite affordable and very easy to install, even for the average computer user. As a bonus, you you'll probably see a nice performance boost while your computer performs other tasks.


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Hello. Thanks for answering.

But my problem is a little different.

I wanted to activate Windows which is in the AiRecovery section.

I have a Windows 7pro x64 license in the AiRecovery section.

After installation from the AiRecovery partition via F9

activated by the key on the back

laptop cover, 100% no problem.

Now it's just a little inconvenience after

installations from the AiRecovery section. Before renovation

when i installed windows 7 it automatically

activated. If the Internet was not connected, then windows

installed with 3 days automatic activation,

if there was no network access for 3 days, then windows

switched to a 30-day trial status, and activate

could be done manually.

Now, when installed in the right

in the bottom corner of the screen under the ASUS obviator in small font

It says that I am not using a legal version of Windows.

And after installation the screen is black, installation

The picture is not installed. This means that I have to

activate windows manually every time and after

activation install installation image

also by hand.

4 years ago there was an article on asus.ru

Editing the Recovery partition. The article included these

After the successful completion of the process, you need to boot the laptop from the disk itself... and... The loaded OS, which we deployed from the images, will be launched in Audit mode.

It didn’t work out for me, apparently the article was written

for windows 7 x32.

On the official website of Asus I found

If you have configured your Windows image to boot to OOBE, but then need to make further configurations to your image in audit mode, you can do one of the following:
Use the CTRL+SHIFT+F3 keyboard shortcut. The computer will reboot into audit mode.
This option may trigger any scripts that you have configured to launch in OOBE

and that’s the only way I was able to enter audit mode. Activating Windows

and after passing “generalize” two drivers crashed

These are video and audio drivers.

In general, with Windows activation

everything worked out, but since I reinstalled the drivers

Windows turned out to be longer by about 500 megabytes.

And I had 3 questions:

1). Is it possible in the AiRecovery section to combine swm images into a wim image and activate windows in it?

since this is the best way to solve this issue.

2). If not, is it possible to prevent the flight?

video and audio drivers when going through “generalize”.

3). If not, is it possible to activate drivers that

if you look at the volume, most likely they were deactivated

when passing “generalize”

since when you reinstall drivers, the volume of Windows increases by the volume of newly installed drivers.

If the need to change your wim image has made you cringe your neck like these cute animals, then you are in the right place. Here I will try to straighten your necks. In this and the following article, we will try to figure out how you can change ready-made Windows images without deploying them to computers. In this article we will look at the basic commands and the ability to add drivers to a finished image. To find out how, please go to the next post. Both here and here we will perform all actions using the DISM utility.

Why do you need to add drivers to a ready-made wim image?

Let's say we have an operating system ready for deployment. Let's say that he is already a couple of months old. Also, let’s say that during this time a new Windows security update, a new improved driver or a language pack was released. And you need 100 computers! But depriving the image of the latest updates and improvements is not particularly good. After all, you can leave your computers in danger for some time. Moreover, all this will have to be done anyway. It’s better to do this once than to check all computers later. You can add a driver to a finished image in several ways:

  1. Create a new image.
  2. Deploy the finished image, add the driver to it and repeat.
  3. Add the required driver to the finished image using .

I hope you understand that the most convenient and fastest method is the third one, and that is what we will consider.

Basic DISM Commands

For those who are superficially familiar with the DISM utility, please go to the article, which is entirely devoted to this one. Still, let's go over some of the commands again, since we may need them.

  • dism /get-wiminfo /wimfile:c:\install.wim

    This command displays information about the wim image. By the way, a couple of times we had to indicate the operating system edition index. Perhaps many have wondered how to find out this index. So I’ll answer: using this command. You can also get information about the image using the command:

  • imagex /info c:\install.wim

    This command is similar to the previous one.

  • dism /get-mountedwiminfo

    Used to obtain information about mounted images.

Working with a DISM live image

As I already said, the DISM utility allows you to work not only with a wim file saved on disk, but also with an image of a running machine, or in another way with an operational image. Using DISM commands when working with a live image, you can only get information about the image, but you cannot change it. To work with an online image, you need to use the /online parameter.

  • dism /online /get-drivers

    Lists all installed drivers.

  • dism /online /get-currentedition

    Output of the active edition of the operational image.

  • dism /online /get-stagededition

    Displays a list of publications that can be removed from the image.

  • dism /online /get-targetedition

    Displays a list of editions to which the operational image can be updated.

  • dism /online /get-driverinfo

    Display information about a specific driver.

  • dism /online /get-intl

    The command will display information regarding regional settings

  • dism /online /get-packages

    Displays information about all installed packages in the operational image.

  • dism /online /get-packageinfo

    Displays information about the selected package.

  • dism /online /get-features

    Displays information about all components

  • dism /online /get-featureinfo

    Display information about specific information.

All of these commands can be used for a non-operational image. To do this, you should use /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya instead of /online. In addition to the above commands, you can perform the following actions with a NOT operational image:

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /get-apppatchinfo

    Displays information about installed Windows Installer patch files.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /get-apppatches

    Displays information about all applied MSP patches for all installed applications.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /get-appinfo

    Display information about a specific Windows Installer application.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /get-apps

    Display information about all installed applications.

How to add a driver to a ready-made Wim image?

Finally we get to today's main dish. Now we will look at the commands for adding a driver to the wim image. To do this, you must specify the folder with the driver .inf file. Drivers are added using the parameter /add-driver, and are deleted - /remove-driver.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /add-driver:c:\driver.inf

    Adding one driver to the mounted image.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /add-driver /driver:c:\mydrivers

    Adding all drivers that are located in the specified folder.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /add-driver /driver:c:\mydrivers /driver:d:\123

    Adding all drivers that are located in the specified folders. Each new folder must be added via the /driver parameter: In this example, two folders are specified.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /add-driver /driver:c:\mydrivers /recurse

    Adding all drivers from the specified folder and its subfolders.

  • dism /image:c:\papka_podklucheniya /remove-driver /driver:oem10.inf

    Removing a driver from a non-operative image. You can find out the name of the required driver if you display a list of them. Many drivers will have a name similar to oem№.inf, where № is a serial number. Such names are automatically set for unsigned drivers. You can read about it by following the link.

With these simple steps you can add the necessary drivers to a ready-made wim image. This can be done in a few clicks, thanks to the excellent DISM utility, the main thing is to know how. I remind you that you can find an article about adding applications and language packs to a wim image through a search, or through the link that I provided in this article. Good luck!